They may not admit it, they may not even be aware of it, but for the next four
weeks every Premier League manager hunting the perfect January deal will be
trying to sign the next Christophe Dugarry.

The French World Cup-winning striker signed on loan for Birmingham City from Bordeaux on Jan 2, 2003 – the second day in the history of English football’s winter transfer window.

In doing so he set the trend for the most popular and effective January deals of the next 10 years.

Birmingham, then on the fringe of the relegation battle, ended the season comfortably mid-table. Dugarry’s five goals in four games in the closing weeks of that campaign were highlighted by his manager, Steve Bruce, as the difference between a worrying first half of the season and encouraging finale.

In Dugarry, the template was set. The focus inevitably falls on the high-end deals for the biggest clubs over the next month, but the needs are naturally greater nearer the bottom, with managers pursuing the charismatic figure who will have an instant, transforming impact.

Stoke City are now established in the Premier League, but Tony Pulis must trace recent progress to January 2009. With his side a point and a place above the relegation zone, he signed James Beattie for £3.5 million from Sheffield United and Matthew Etherington from West Ham. Beattie scored seven in 16 games and Stoke finished 12th, 11 points clear of the drop.

Harry Redknapp – likely to be active again in the next month — saw January 2009 as the means to leading Tottenham out of the bottom three. His spree on Jermain Defoe, Wilson Palacios, Pascal Chimbonda and Robbie Keane ensured Spurs went from third bottom to eighth in six months.

Similarly, Aston Villa were fourth bottom when they signed Darren Bent for £18 million in January 2011. Bent scored nine in 16 games; Villa finished ninth.

The leading managers tend to be the most critical of January business because they rarely use it.

“The January transfer market has never been the best market and that has proved itself over the years,” said Sir Alex Ferguson. “You get very few big transfers – all the big transfers are done in the summer.”

Arsène Wenger is tipped to be one of the biggest spenders this January. If so, he will have to explain a Damascus-style conversion given his comments on his own club’s website 12 months ago. “I am against the transfer period in the middle of the season because I feel it is unfair. I don’t find it right,” he said.

Wenger will be forgiven if his position has changed given Arsenal now fall into one of the categories of clubs who tend to be most active at this time of the year. January, for the most part, is a month for the desperate and impulsive.

The relegation-haunted side prepared to make a desperate final effort to find the goalscorer who wll secure an improbable escape (see Queens Park Rangers); the dissatisfied manager who endured an inauspicious August and has waited four months to make amends (Arsenal and Liverpool); the billionaire owner who wants a cure for post-Christmas malaise (Chelsea every season); or the recently appointed manager keen to get his own men in to prove how his eye for talent is far superior than his predecessor (QPR, again).

Yet January deals do not have to be desperate solutions. Half of the Manchester United defence of the past few years arrived in January, Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra both joining early in 2006. Goalkeepers Anders Lindegaard arrived in January 2011 and Paul Scholes’s re-signing a year ago changed the momentum in the title race.

Liverpool’s only unqualified success in the transfer market since 2007 – Luis Suárez – was purchased in January 2011. At the time it was overshadowed by the deals for Fernando Torres and Andy Carroll, but it has proved by far the best value.

Newcastle’s capture of Papis Cisse 12 months ago allowed them to prolong their challenge for a Champions League place, and certainly confirmed European qualification.

To trace the beginnings of Everton’s current revival to serious top-four contenders, look no further than last January, when the £6.5 million deal for Nikica Jelavic and £2 million capture of Darron Gibson, allied to loan agreements for Steven Pienaar and Landon Donavon, set David Moyes’s side on course for the most prolific points collection during any calendar year at Goodison since 1987.

“The boys we brought in January made a massive difference,” Moyes has reiterated on several occasions since.

The catastrophes are plentiful, too, of course. Mention Wayne Bridge to Manchester City or Afonso Alves to Middlesbrough and watch the grimaces follow.

And when you consider the later career of that most unlikely prototype, Dugarry, another pattern emerges. After penning a permanent deal at St Andrew’s in the summer of 2003, Dugarry did nothing and was gone six months later. Likewise, Beattie and Bent never sustained that initial impact.

The January transfer window is an opportunity to find a short-term solution to what, more often than not, is a longer-term problem.